


the four seasons.

by Austell



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7467438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austell/pseuds/Austell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That which isolates us connects us.</p><p>A rambling four-chapter fic from the viewpoint of Weiss, mainly just to have fun with ideas about Semblances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the four seasons.

"Ruby!" hissed Weiss, leaning over the library table. "Ruby, are you looking at—Ruby, what is  _ this _ ?" She stabbed a finger down towards the floor.

Ruby, coaxed from her book at last, followed Weiss' finger slowly down to the trail of spotted red on the floor, garish and unsettling on the dark carpet. Weiss watched her track it, slowly and laboriously, first down the aisle towards where it disappeared around a shelf (and went all the way out to the courtyard, where Weiss had first noticed the strange colours), and then in the other direction—past the legs of the desk she was sitting at—up to where the long, narrow cut on her left ring finger was slowly seeping another droplet of rich red onto the glossy front cover of her copy of  _ The Queue to Mars _ .

To Ruby's credit, at least she reacted immediately, tossing the book aside with a squeak and covering the little wound with her other hand. The surface of the desk was absolutely covered in red, like flecks of leftover paint on something old.

"Um," she squeaked, and then said nothing.

"Yes," sighed Weiss. " _ Um _ . Are you bleeding? Did you walk all the way here, to the library, while bleeding?" Had Ruby somehow forgotten that Beacon had infirmaries in every building? An entire hospital wing, too, which they'd been given a tour of during orientation, and which Ruby had actually visited more than once? Places she should really be going to immediately, but instead she was sitting here, letting the cut drip and drip away, not sealed by her Aura, not clotting or healing...

"Um, I guess," said Ruby, in that infuriatingly nonchalant way of hers. "Sorry?" Why did she always apologise before Weiss could ask questions or—or  _ explain _ ?

Weiss wrestled to keep her voice at library levels. "You need to get that looked at. Now."

"No, no, it's fine—"

"What do you—you want to ignore this?" Weiss couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You do! You've been ignoring it!"

"Um, it's more like—" Ruby's voice dwindled sharply, and she folded her hands in her lap—"I mean, it's not... it kind of happens now and then, it's normal for me, and I guess I just... didn't notice it?"

"You didn't notice," Weiss echoed flatly. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," whispered Ruby.

"It doesn't hurt?"

"Not any more than usual? It's not serious or anything. It's just a paper cut."

Weiss massaged her temples. This was too much for her to deal with at lunchtime. "Well, now you've noticed, so go to the infirmary."

"I'll be fine," said Ruby, exactly as Weiss had expected.

Weiss put her books down with an audible  _ thump _ . She planted both hands on the table and leaned in towards Ruby's face, prompting a flinch. "Listen—" she began.

But Ruby threw up her hands in surprise—a reflex, automatic—and the motion threw up a fountain of red.

Weiss jerked back in shock, but there was no spattering of blood—the stuff hovered in the air; it fluttered slowly to the floor.

She'd assumed. She should have looked closer.

She reached out, hesitantly, and plucked one of the large red petals from the table. It was impossibly smooth and delicate—it felt like she was rubbing velvet between her finger and thumb, or trailing her fingertips across the surface of a pool of water. She could just faintly make out an intricate pattern of veins.

"You see?" said Ruby, still as bright as always. "It's not even blood."

As she spoke, Weiss glanced up to see another too-red petal peel free from the edge of the cut on her finger, discolouring and flaking away like dead skin.

Ruby extended her hand carefully to the side, straight out but with the fingers angled down to expose the cut. Slowly the petals lifted off the desk—glided across the floor—swirled around beneath her hand in an intangible breeze. Slowly they coiled around her legs and gathered around her arm and pasted themselves, one by one, back onto her skin or the fabric of her sleeve. The colour faded from them, and they vanished. Then the cut sealed itself, leaving no trace, and Ruby relaxed.

"All fixed," she announced, with a small smile.

Weiss frowned. She was less certain now, but something still wasn't right. Her mouth worked for a moment.

"I—" she started, then stopped when Ruby winced in anticipation. "No. I'm—I apologise." She fumbled for the right words. "I thought you were hurt, I thought... are you sure you're all right?"

"Yup!" said Ruby, and then she looked at Weiss for a long time. Her eyes were a strange colour, Weiss had always thought, a pale grey that blended into the background and made her pupils look lost and distant. Weiss had to look away.

There was a tangible reluctance, a drawing out of the syllables, when Ruby said, "Um, I guess I'll explain?"

Weiss' mind went blank of the words she'd been queueing up, and she nodded. After a moment she pulled out the seat opposite Ruby's and settled herself into it. She waited while Ruby bit her lip, and twiddled her fingers, and frowned.

"Okay," said Ruby at last. "It's, um, a symptom of my Semblance. You know how you told me about your scar...? I mean, not the personal stuff, just—how it didn't heal, because your Aura had, like, forgotten how your body used to be shaped—"

"Proprioceptive trauma," said Weiss shortly, trying to focus on the topic.

"Right. Sorry. That." Ruby sounded contrite, which meant that some of Weiss' anger had seeped into her voice, which she hated because she was trying to  _ stop _ that, now.

Ruby took a second or two to continue. "Okay, so it's not exactly the same thing, but I've had... trouble with my Aura since I first activated it. Instead of healing me normally, when I got injured, I'd start to... leak, lose bits of my body, through the wound. Like just now. I don't remember exactly what it's called but basically, um, my Aura isn't strong enough to remember what shape I'm supposed to be unless I consciously focus and strengthen that area, like you do when you're channelling. And it tries to be something else instead. I thought it was normal until I started practicals at Signal, and I fractured my tibia and woke up in the middle of the night because my whole leg had broken off up to the knee."

She gave a little laugh. Weiss wasn't sure why.

"Oh, um, that was a mess. The doctor told me I'd probably have to get a prosthetic leg, and the teachers told me I had to get a military-grade prosthetic to be a Huntress, and even if I got one I couldn't be a Huntress with a weak Aura, and Yang said those kinds of prosthetics were expensive and I'd probably have to spend the year at home no matter what happened, and I went into shock. In that order, I think? Maybe not. And then Uncle Qrow came along and fixed everything. Am I rambling?"

That put Weiss on the spot. "No—I don't think so." She tried to think of a question. "What—who is Uncle Qrow?"

Ruby's eyes lit up. "Oh! I haven't told you about him, have I? Uh, basically he's my uncle and also the person who helped me become a Huntress. He taught me how to move my Aura to different parts of my body, just the basic breathing stuff, and I got my leg back! And then I started learning from him how I was supposed to use it in combat, so even though I can't hit as hard and block as well as most people I could still basically do the same things, as long as I'm careful and pay more attention. And he helped me figure out how to handle the strain of my Semblance without, um, hurting myself.  _ And _ he helped me build Crescent Rose. And I didn't even get held back a year! I owe a lot to him. Weiss?"

Weiss nodded. "He sounds… good. Capable, I mean."

Ruby nodded fiercely. "Yeah! Yeah. He's amazing. You should totally meet him—I bet he'd even impress  _ you _ ."

"Maybe he will," Weiss allowed. "So—just now, what happened?"

Ruby wilted instantly. "Oh—nothing. I mean, I wasn't hurt, or anything like that. I just got, um, distracted. With the book. Stuff happens. I still have to focus when I want to heal, or put myself back together."

"And," Weiss pressed carefully, "you're fine now?"

"The cut's fine, yeah!"

"Anything else? How about yesterday? You fell off the roof."

Ruby squinted at her. "That sort of thing happens all the time, you know. You don't have to worry about it."

"Or—" Weiss stopped herself, and looked down at the grain of the table. "Okay. I guess."

"Sorry. This must be… weird."

"No!" Weiss startled herself with the odd sound of her voice, creaky and a little hoarse. She straightened up and said, a little more calmly, "No, it's not. Thank you for telling me... this. Um, Uncle Qrow—is he a doctor?"

"Oh!" said Ruby, as if Weiss had reminded her of something. "Oh, no. Well, he—he knew one, he called them in. They were, like, a specialist. But it was his idea. He said what was happening to me reminded him of shapeshifting Semblances, and maybe that was actually part of how it worked. So a big part of the visualisations I went through for healing was me imagining myself as something else, and then changing back into a human. And it worked."

"Oh. That... makes sense."

Ruby seemed to take Weiss' inability to come up with a response as something else. She giggled. "Yeah. Maybe my true form is, like, a rosebush." She deepened her voice a little. "I may look like an ordinary student of Beacon on the outside, but on the inside... I'm a plant."

"Right."

"I wonder if people who turn into plants can actually turn back," said Ruby conversationally. "They don't have brains. Maybe they're stuck like that."

There was a little quiet.

"You know," said Ruby, "one big plus of my Semblance acting like this is that I don't really get seriously injured. Bruises, broken bones, infected wounds—they just turn into rose petals, and I can fix them up afterwards. I'm basically invincible, right?"

Weiss didn't think Ruby looked invincible. She looked impossibly delicate. She looked like one of the ornaments back at home, tall and graceful and carefully balanced, which you could shatter with a single careless knock and never put back together the same way again.

"Any way," said Ruby, standing up suddenly, "it's five minutes to class. That means we should go, right?"

"Four minutes," said Weiss automatically.

"Even better," said Ruby, and then she was off.

Weiss didn't watch her go. She was trying to concentrate. She was good at sensing Auras, usually, but she'd never tried something like this before. Maybe it was just the way the conversation felt that was making her worry—wrong and heavy and suffocating under the pressure of things unspoken—but there was still something missing from the things Ruby had said.

She couldn't find anything meaningful in the fuzzy shape of Ruby's Aura. What she did notice, when she opened her eyes, was a trail of tiny rose petals falling from the reopened cut in Ruby's hand.

As she watched, the petals stirred, danced in circles down the aisle, and finally lifted into the air, following Ruby around the corner and out of sight.


End file.
